


Come With Me?

by oldmoviebuff



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, I'm a horrible person., I'm seriously a horrible person, Vanessa and John, after season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmoviebuff/pseuds/oldmoviebuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here is a little halloween treat to all of you who subscribe to your local Penny Dreadful. Takes place after season 2, but not really any spoilers. You really just need to know about the relationship that developed between John and Vanessa over the season, nothing else is mentioned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come With Me?

Come With Me?

 

            The floor creaked and he stirred. He thought he would’ve been used to the constant varying noises the northbound ship made by now, but he was wrong. Even in his cabin he felt a general unease. Due to his meticulous efforts, very few of his fellow passengers knew what he looked like. They had seen glimpses of his visage here and there, but for once nature seemed to be on his side. As the days passed and the length of the sun’s light shortened, he could cover himself up in scarves, coats, and shawls of the like and no one thought it odd. Not that he needed such dressings, but the less stares and screams he got, the better. Only in his room did he feel safe enough to maintain his trousers and worn sweater. However, he lived in constant paranoia that at any moment, an ill turn of the ship could send someone through his door on accident and all of his work would be undone.

            A second creak brought one hand to his lantern and the other to cover his face with his blanket. Someone was wandering around at this late hour.

            A third, louder creak was followed by the shrill squeak of his door hinge. He quickly covered his head and turned his lantern down low enough in order to obscure but not bring his modest cabin into total darkness.

            “I believe you are in the wrong cabin. Pl-please forgive me, I’m indecent…” He managed out, on the verge of panic, which only increased as he felt a weight suddenly near him on the bed.

            “Come now, Mr. Clare. How could you possibly be indecent?”

            Shock overcame him as he lowered his woolen shield with trembling hands. Could it be?

            “Miss Ives?” Even in the half-light of his small room, he knew those eyes. Those piercing blue eyes that always bore right through him.

            “Vanessa, please.” She raised her beautiful slender fingers to his lantern and illuminated the room. Normally, he would’ve flinched at the act, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

            “How…”

            “At the last port.” She smiled her half smile as she untied her cloak and placed it on his writing table. “I decided to take you up on your invitation. Let us see this desolate shore together.”

            His faculties seemed to strike him all at once as he sat up in his crate of a bed and inched as far into the wall as possible. “Miss Ives…are you sure that…”

Her soft, lovely finger was at his lips before he could continue. “Vanessa, John. There’s no need for formalities here.”

John could hardly speak. His words, that came to him so easily and so often, failed him. If he had any faith in the God of Man, he would have thanked him for this miracle, this raven-haired angel that was now before him. This was truly perfection incarnate seated before him. Her porcelain skin was so perfect and was framed so magnificently against her black curls and black dress. He couldn’t picture her in any other color. There was a slight hint of rose in her cheeks that bestowed upon her simultaneous depth and feminine radiance. It more than amply reflected the difference between the life she held and the death he embodied. And the weight she always seemed to carry on her shoulders, even as she smiled, appeared to be lifted.

        “What made you change your mind? Have you lost your darkness?” He managed out as a whisper, almost afraid to speak louder.

        “I decided that my darkness would do best away from mankind. Just as you are running from them, I am running for them.” He saw a shadow pass over her face as she spoke, but it left as quickly as it arrived.

John knew nothing of what plagued her mind and soul, yet he understood. “You are welcome to run with me as long as you feel you have to.”

At this, John saw a sort of glow befall his lovely companion, and a smile that would make even the coldest heart melt. He was about to inquire whether or not she needed his assistance settling aboard the ship when her warm hands cupped his face.

        “I’ll run to the ends of the Earth, so long as I can do it with you.” At this she leaned forward and captured his lips in her own.

John closed his eyes as he tried to piece together this experience in his brain. This wasn’t the chaste kiss of a dear friend that Vanessa had given him on his parting, last. Nor was this the kiss of frustrated malicious temptation that Lily had offered him. This was something different entirely. This was the kiss of finding your kindred spirit, your soul mate, your only true companion in this festering ball that was Man’s world.

John cautiously brought his hands up to Vanessa as she leaned in closer to him. She pulled away from his lips and began to gently cover his face in small, warm pecks as she glided her hands to his shoulders then to his back.

Using as much restraint as he could muster, John pulled himself away from her attentions and he held her to his chest. He rocked back and forth as he tried to calm his breathing and control the urges rapidly taking over his mind and body.

        “I’m truly sorry, but-but we must stop this now.” Tears began to flow freely as he held Vanessa’s perfect face from his. “I have strength, a type of strength that is not natural or safe. I-I don’t want to hurt you. I would never be able to forgive myself.”

        “Mr. Clare,” Her eyes brimmed with tears as well as she held her hands over his, “There is nothing you could do that would hurt me. You are too gentle, too kind, too good.”

        “Please. Do not place such pleasantries on my character. There are things I’ve done, dark things, unforgivable things, I’m not the saint _you_ think I am.”

        “Then we are indeed two of a kind, for I am not the angel _you_ think I am.” Vanessa didn’t give him time to respond and instead pushed him down flat against the bed in a passion he had not known her to be capable of. The shock of her actions gave him pause; until he felt her hands at the seams of his sweater.

        “Don’t. My face isn’t the only malformed feature I possess.”

        “My dear, sweet John.” She smiled as she slowly raised his garment and dragged her fingers up his torso as she went. “Your mind holds a beauty far more attractive than the scars you believe will repulse me.” She pulled the sweater over his head and held his gaze as she leaned down to kiss the scars etched in his chest. John could only shudder out a moan as he closed his eyes and tried to swallow the impulse to take her with the violent desire he had felt towards Maud.

When the kisses ceased, he opened his eyes to see Vanessa undoing the elaborate confines of her dress, lace-by-lace, button-by-button. She took notice of his bewildered stares halfway through her outer corset. “Another curse of my class.” She smirked. “The conservative dressings of a lady. Pull this.” She offered the end of a length of black ribbon to his trembling hand.

John took it and carefully pulled, the last of her dress giving away as he did so. In a matter of moments, a plume-y, black pile of cloth joined her abandoned cloak as she stood over him. His breathing became uncontrollable, heavy gasps as Vanessa slowly undid her final corset, leaving her in nothing except her under dressings.

With his hand plastered to his mouth to try and quell the unnatural noises he was surely making, John attempted to avert his eyes and clear his thoughts. A sound mind was one of the few things John possessed that he was actually proud of, and he feared that moving any further would reduce him to his more animalistic urges. Vanessa didn’t know, she couldn’t know, how easily he could break her. Apart from the physical harm he could inflict, he wouldn’t even think of the emotional harm. What if she finally saw him for who or what he was? The caring in her eyes could so suddenly turn to fear.

Vanessa, not privy to his thoughts, and muddled in her own, quickly climbed in next to him and wrapped him in her slender arms. How could such a tiny doll of a woman give off so much heat? Could she not feel it? Was it him? Did his coldness of dead flesh make hers feel like smoldering fire by comparison?

        “You must forgive me…for the temperature…the nights are cold and I cannot stop it from invading my person.” John stammered out as logical of an explanation that he could muster under this nerve-wracking circumstance.

        “Then why don’t I help warm you?” Vanessa pulled back from the embrace and regarded him with an expression of pure affection.

The course of events that happened next, John couldn’t rightfully recount as they happened so fast amidst kisses, touches, and more clothes being shed. It wasn’t until Vanessa was fully naked above his own similarly naked form that he was able to reclaim himself long enough to protest. It happened as the world-weary beauty was leaning down to claim his mouth one final time before they proceeded with the act itself, that John clasped her shoulders with his full strength and held her away.

        “Please… _please_ …” he pleaded as tears began to fall down his face. “I don’t know if I will be able to control my actions any further…”

        “Then don’t. However…” She grabbed his hands with surprising and equal strength and relocated them from her shoulders to her hips. “I believe you are doing yourself a disservice. I have seen beasts.” Her voice darkened as she leaned in closer and closer. “I have seen terrors.” She held herself a breath’s length away. “You may think yourself one, but to me you are neither, John. You are a man.” With that, Vanessa pressed her face against his own and all but consumed him.

John’s hands trembled at her waist as she began to grind her womanhood against him. There was such heat exuding from every pore on her that John was almost certain that she would catch fire. Finally, she pulled herself away from his face and began to crawl back to where she was just above him. He looked down at himself and was almost ashamed for how his eagerly his body was betraying him at this moment. As much as every last part of him was screaming for this to go on, he feared the absolute worst if they were to proceed. But in too short a time, Vanessa lowered herself onto him and all thought ceased.

Such heat, such wild, living heat. Among the stars in his eyes at the sheer sensation of her body engulfing his, her heat threatened to burn his very core. Immediately, instincts he didn’t know he possessed, took over as he pulled himself up into a seated position and enfolded her in his arms. Never before had he ever really cared about being hot or cold except when it was to be more similar to the humans who dared touch him.But now, now he wanted Vanessa’s heat, her warmth, her vitality. Everything that made her different from him. If he held her close enough maybe her warmth would banish the coldness from his flesh forevermore. He wept into her chest as she rested her head atop his and moved her pelvis along with his in perfect rhythm. He felt her hands guide his face to her breast before cradling his head, allowing him to suck on a most perfect nipple. John closed his eyes as he suckled at the breast of the woman who had become all things to him; friend, mother, lover, savior.He heard her moan at his actions, which prompted him to pull back and see his dark angel in raptures similar to his own. He felt his heart race at her whimpers of pleasure, and began to thrust faster and deeper into her body and her heat. As he did so, John felt something growing inside him. A kind of tension that just kept building and building, threating to tear him apart from within. He held on to Vanessa tighter and tighter as he feared that he would indeed fall apart if he continued. But Vanessa, somehow not affected by his stone grip, only moved faster and faster, her moans turning into screams as she went. Then it happened. An explosion. He felt his long healed sutures come undone, his breath leave his body, the light go from his eyes, and the spark of electricity leave his form. After that one brief moment of nonexistence, his life came flooding back to him just in time to see Vanessa experience her own instant of complete nothingness.

All too soon she pulled away, and John felt the heat leave him. A sickening feeling of loneliness washed over him.He felt as though he had lost a part of himself. As though for a short while, he _was_ life, actual living life in a living form that was stolen away with Vanessa’s separation.She rejoined him in the small bed and melted herself against him as though she was searching, in him, for the same thing that he was searching for in her. Two beings, detached from mankind, yet still forced to walk among them, looking for brief solace in one another. John closed his eyes as she drifted off asleep, her breath pulsing against his chest, in a steady motion.

He shot up in bed at the sudden clap of thunder, and a gust of wind blew open his small window. They must have sailed into a storm as they slept.He looked over to check that his sudden movements hadn’t disturbed Vanessa, but found only empty space. She had never been there. She had never changed her mind and followed him. Miss Ives remained in London as every passing moment sailed him further and further away. He let the rain blow in and cover him in its cold blanket as he wept cold tears, and sailed to a cold desolate shore, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I hope none of you feel cheated that I made this a delusion or a dream. I sincerely went into this this knowing how I was going to end it, even down to how I was going to word the paragraph. I feel so bad about it because poor John/Caliban just keeps getting shit on. But, at the same time, I can see his mind playing a cruel trick, like this, on him. Thinking he has found solace only to be woken back up to the harsh reality that is his miserable existence. And BELIEVE ME, after that last conversation he had with Vanessa, I was really hoping that she would decline his offer, but ask him to remain with her to offer her protection, or at least company while everyone in her life was torn away from her. God, I seriously cried he asked her and she said no. You could seriously tell that he was taking the risk to put his heart on the line again by asking her to join him. Then she refused, called him the one thing he's always longed to hear, left, and he cried! I LOVE/HATE THIS SHOW SO MUCH!!!!!!


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